by Charles Yu
Deal, huh? I’m a businessman, detectives, and I know about deals. That is a shit deal.
Fong gives a signal. From downstairs, the sound of a bottle breaking against the craps table. Someone lifts the roulette wheel off its base and flings it across the room like a solid oak Frisbee. It smashes into the bar, spilling tequila and Corona and red wine everywhere. Tables flipping, chips flying, kung fu breaking out all over the place. Shots fired, people diving for cover. Turner and Green draw their weapons and run low toward the window, trying to survey the situation. In the chaos, Fong ducks out a secret exit, leaving behind his mysterious beauty.
“Uh,” you say. Real smooth, dumbass. A natural action hero.
“Get low,” she says, but it’s not in the script and you just stand there, frozen, unsure of what you’re supposed to do. She dives, knocking you to the ground just as glass explodes behind you in a spray of bullets, the two of you tumbling to the ground, faces close. It takes you a second to register the fact that she saved your life.
“I’m Karen,” she says. Also not in the script.
“Will,” you say. “Willis Wu.”
“Nice to meet you, Willis Wu.”
A henchman appears in the doorway. It’s Fatty Choy. You notice him a beat before anyone else and, in one continuous motion, kick up to your feet, execute a front handspring covering three-quarters of the distance, coming in not straight-on but at a right angle from your opponent’s nondominant side, kick the gun out of his hand and watch it slide across the floor and stop right at Turner’s feet. He turns around, still processing what just happened. You catch your breath. Whoa. You moved fast—faster than anyone in the room. That was some Older Brother–caliber fighting right there. You didn’t even know you were capable. Even Sifu might have been impressed.
You pin Fatty to the ground, putting a knee in his back, iron grip on his wrists. Almost like you’re a real cop.
“Ow,” he groans, quietly. “Dude, give me a break.”
Sorry, you say, easing off a little.
“It’s cool, Willis. That was some hero shit right there. When did you get so good at kung fu?”
“I don’t know,” you say. “I guess I’ve been practicing.”
“No shit,” he says. “I can tell.”
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
Everyone okay?
Green picks herself up, brushes glass off.
GREEN
Nice work.
Turner holsters his weapon, looks rattled.
TURNER
(to you)
That wasn’t proper procedure.
GREEN
Well he saved your ass, Miles.
TURNER
Shit. Where’d Fong go?
Green finds the hidden door, slides it open and closed.
GREEN
Check it out. He got away.
Turner cuffs Fatty, roughs him up a bit, slamming him down into a chair.
TURNER
Talk. Your boss—does he know anything about Older Brother? Were they working together?
You talk in Fake Chinese to Fatty Choy, and he pretends to answer in some gibberish he’s making up as he goes along. Then in real Cantonese he says he’s not telling you shit. You turn to Green and Turner.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
He says he doesn’t know anything.
WOMAN (O.S.)
He’s lying.
You turn toward the woman, surprised.
GREEN
Wu, this is Detective Karen Lee. Although looks like you two have already met.
You turn to look at her, trying not to faint. Her cheekbones. Her earlobes. Her hair! Her hair should be on a commercial.
Karen Lee shakes your hand with an iron grip, flashes a smile, and that’s when you realize where you’ve seen her before: she’s the woman from the poster. Floating behind Black and White.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
Thanks.
LEE
For what?
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
Uh, for saving my life?
LEE
I know. I just wanted to hear you say it. Pretty good footwork back there, Will. We might be able to use a guy like you in undercover vice.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
You mean, like, a full-time role? Like—
LEE
Kung Fu Guy? Maybe. Anything is possible.
She looks at her hand, which you’re still holding. You let it go. She smiles and leans in. She smells so good.
She whispers to you: Let me do the talking. You nod, unsure why you’re going along with her, oh yeah, you are probably in love with her already, that’s why. She turns back to Green.
LEE
He knows something. But he’ll never snitch.
TURNER
(nods, clenches)
Honor is very important to these people.
LEE
Sure. Also, they’ll kill his family.
GREEN
(to Lee)
You learn anything?
LEE
You mean before you crashed my investigation and let the perp get away? Did I learn anything before all that shit happened?
GREEN
I’m sorry it went down like that, Karen. But we’ll get him.
TURNER
Fong’s probably halfway to Hong Kong by now. The money got away.
Lee holds up an Hermès bag.
LEE
Nope. Here’s the money.
Turner takes it, opens it, turns it over.
TURNER
Empty.
LEE
Not in the bag. The money is the bag.
GREEN
(getting it)
Counterfeit?
LEE
Fong was running fake luxury goods. Chinatown’s number one export.
GREEN
So what’s our next move?
LEE
(turns to you)
I bet you know where they make those bags.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
I do?
LEE
You do.
And then you understand. It’s the bridge into the next scene, how Black and White works, the plot humming along from clue to clue. You’re along for the ride, part of the story now. Just follow along, and she’ll keep you safe.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
Right. I do.
LEE
Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.
Karen looks at you as if to say, you and me, we’re in this together. The way she looks at you makes you melt a little bit and then you realize your back is wet, and you wonder if maybe you are actually melting? You touch your shirt, which is soaked with sweat from the fight, except it’s only on your right side, and you look at your hand and see it’s covered in blood, just like the floor under you. A lot of blood. Your blood. Which is when your legs give out, and then you fall down.
GREEN
No!
(to a patrolman)
Get a medic here—this, uh, Asian Man has been shot.
Turner takes a knee, crouching low to talk to you.
TURNER
You helped our investigation.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
Now you nice to me?
GREEN
I won’t forget this. We won’t forget it. You have brought honor on your family.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
Wait, what?
TURNER<
br />
You’re dying, man.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
What? Already? Are you sure?
TURNER
I’m sure.
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
I don’t understand. How can I be dying? I just made it.
(to Karen)
I just met you.
Detective Lee looks resigned, but unsurprised.
LEE
I know, Will. I know. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but you know how it is. You’re an Asian Man. Your story was great, while it lasted, but now it’s done. I hope our paths cross again. Maybe somewhere else.
And you think: no. It won’t be somewhere else. It will be here, again, in Chinatown, next year, same place. To be yellow in America. A special guest star, forever the guest.
FADE TO BLACK
Behind many masks and many characters, each performer tends to wear a single look, a naked unsocialized look, a look of concentration, a look of one who is privately engaged in a difficult, treacherous task.
Erving Goffman
ACT IV
STRIVING IMMIGRANT
Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.
You are not Kung Fu Guy.
You were close there for a moment. But then you died.
DEATH
When you die, it sucks.
DEATH, PART II
The first thing that happens is you can’t work for forty-five days.
By the coffee and donuts you run into a familiar face.
“Hey,” you say. “Attractive Officer.”
“Very Special Guest Star,” she says. “Here we are.”
“Surprised to see you here,” you say.
“Why would you be surprised?”
“It’s Black and White,” you say. “Thought you’d have a bigger part.”
“Asian Men aren’t the only invisible people around here, Willis. Look around.”
You see what she means. A bunch of Asian dudes and Black women, nibbling on bear claws, stirring powdered creamer into paper cups.
“We should do our own thing, someday,” she says. “Black and Yellow.”
“You’ll be, what? Ex-CIA?”
“Slash supermodel. Slash mother of four,” she says. “Their dad takes care of the kids.”
“And I’ll be?”
“Whatever you want, man,” she says.
“A guy can dream,” you say.
“Cheers to that.” You touch your small coffee cups to each other’s, a toast to something you both know will never happen.
DEATH, PART III
Why forty-five days? It’s the minimum length necessary, just long enough for everyone to forget you existed.
* * *
—
Because even though you all look alike, it’s still weird if you get murdered on Tuesday and by Thursday you’re showing up in the background of a street scene or as a busboy.
* * *
—
Who knows how they calculate these things but someone did and figured out the optimal amount of time. Optimal for them, of course, not for you. Not for anyone who needs to make a living as a Delivery Guy, or a Busboy, or an Inscrutable Background Oriental. Not optimal at all. It feels like an eternity and no matter how much you might need the cash, whatever your sob story, sick baby, hungry kid, Mom needs her medicine, casting won’t even touch you for the mandatory cooling-off period. Doesn’t matter to them. When you’re dead, you are nobody.
Some people think it isn’t the worst thing in the world to die. Because if you never die—if you play the same role too long—you start to get confused. Forget who you really are.
Your mother used to die all the time. You always knew when it had happened, because on those days she’d pick you up from school and she’d have taken the pins out of her hair so it fell down to her shoulders and you always thought she looked so glamorous, with her hair like that, with the makeup from work still on. You’d go back to the SRO together and while you washed your face and neck and hands and changed into your sleep clothes she would make you a bowl of fried rice with an egg and a few pickles. Some of the happiest times of your life were when your mother was dead, because you knew it meant she would be home for six weeks, you would have her all to yourself in the afternoons. You would play with a toy or watch television and she would sit next to you, practicing her English while biding her time between lives, always preparing for her next role, however small, for a day, to be someone, if only for a short while.
When she was dead, she got to be your mother.
INT. AMERICAN MOVIES—1950S AND ’60S
She’d once dreamed of being more. When she first started out, as Young Asian Woman. She imagined a life for herself, full of romance, glamour. One of the few American stories that had made its way to the silver screen of Taipei in the ’50s, an afternoon at the cinema with her father and nine sisters and brothers, sharing one Coke. Being the eighth of ten, she might get one good sip before it got taken back by siblings further up the chain, but that one sip was enough to savor, sitting up on her heels to get a better view, holding her father’s hand, and watching the perfect faces, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Natalie Wood, their luminous whiteness shimmering in the cool, darkened theater.
INT. THE MOVIE VERSION OF HER LIFE—NIGHT
She’s in a wine red cheongsam, Mandarin collar, short sleeves. Gold piping from neck to bottom. Slits rising up each leg. Nat King Cole on the jukebox, smoke rising from the tips of cigarettes held by men sitting in twos and threes, all heads turning as she descends the stairs.
And now her costar makes his entrance, Old Asian Man, but like her, he’s young, dashing. He sees her and is overcome by her beauty.
DASHING ASIAN MAN
I’ve been looking for you.
PRETTY ASIAN HOSTESS
That so? And now that you’ve found me, what do you have to say for yourself?
He opens his mouth, but the words won’t come out.
She waits in anticipation for him, but there’s no line for him, nothing he can say. No stage direction, or action lines, or parentheticals telling them what they’re thinking. He looks back at the door, and at her, trying to remember, but it’s already slipping away. The outside, the world beyond. A life they could have together, if only they could figure a way out. Could rent a home or even, dream of dreams, own one. Find a job, new costumes, have names other than Asian Woman, Asian Man.
Instead, they remain here. In the smoky room, she in her dress, he in his suit. As we pull back, we see that this is a golden palace, or it was, once. When the colors were brighter, the music swingier. Now it’s the Golden Palace Chinese Restaurant.
INT. GOLDEN PALACE CHINESE RESTAURANT—NIGHT
No less radiant in her cheongsam, she doesn’t descend the stairs. Instead, she stands, dutifully, at the hostess station, greeting patrons as they enter.
He still wears his suit, but the tie is gone, the top button now open to reveal an undershirt damp with perspiration, his black slacks now worn thin in the knees from bending over in the walk-in freezer, from loading fifty-pound sacks of rice, from clearing tables of plates with steamed fish, braised pork, hot and sour soup.
After close, he lingers, waiting to see if she’ll have some tea with him.
ASIAN MAN/WAITER
Do you have a name?
PRETTY ASIAN HOSTESS
Not really. No.
ASIAN MAN/WAITER
Why don’t you give yourself one?
PRETTY ASIAN HOSTESS
You can do that?
ASIAN MAN/WAITER
Why not? It can just be for us. Didn’t you have a name, that you liked? From the movies?
; She thinks for a moment, then decides.
PRETTY ASIAN HOSTESS
Dorothy. I’ll call myself Dorothy. And you? What should I call you?
ASIAN MAN/WAITER
You can call me Wu. Ming-Chen Wu.
They talk easily, sharing a cigarette, pot after pot of oolong or, her favorite, chrysanthemum, trading backstories.
She’d come from a hard background in the old country, and he smiles in recognition, me too, me too, both of them laughing—Striving Immigrant was the only kind of work they could get. Still, they were appreciative. This was a plot that had a shape to it, something understandable. Tiny, anonymous parts for each of them, an undercurrent of social or political relevance. Hard to see the big picture from their vantage point, but they knew that behind them was a historical backdrop, that they were part of a prestigious project, with the sweep and scope of a grand American narrative. So they do what it takes, make the best of a small role, just to get in.
INT. DOROTHY’S BACKSTORY—HOSPITAL—DAY
She as a nurse’s assistant, a yellow girl living in Alabama in 1969. Scale then was a dollar seventy-five an hour, and then a twenty-five-cent raise, making two bucks even, helping to give sponge baths to the older patients, fending off looks and wandering hands. Hey come here, hey you China doll, with the porcelain skin and almond eyes, let me get a look at those slim thighs, and then when the advances were politely yet firmly rebuffed, the quick turn to embarrassed indignation, to entitled anger. To: I think my bedpan needs emptying, to something ugly muttered under the breath.
Home not being much of a safe haven. She’d stepped off the boat and into the home of her sister and her sister’s husband, a guest (she thought) whose chores and responsibilities quickly began to feel more like payment. Her older sister, Angela, perhaps envious of her younger sister’s looks. How angry Angela had been when she’d borrowed Angela’s sweater, how her brother-in-law had looked at her in her sweater, how Angela pretended not to notice. Could draw a line from that moment to the moment, not three months later, when she found herself kicked out of the house, sent packing to live with a different sister in Ohio. How Angela packed her suitcase for her, bought a one-way bus ticket to Akron.
